Smith Still Wants Harkins

18 January 2013 02:03

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While the club does not want a permanent deal and all that entails, Gary Harkins wants security

Gary Harkins would provide a boost to Dundee if they can bring him in from Kilmarnock. So says manager Barry Smith believes Harkins would provide a lift to the SPL strugglers both on and off the park - is the players can agree a deal. The clubs have agreed Harkins can move on loan but the player's advisors want the loan to be a permanent move instead. Harkins had a successful spell with Dundee club between 2009 and 2011, before heading to Rugby Park. Smith said: "It's a case of if it happens, it happens. Everybody knows that he was a fans' favourite here and the qualities he's got are qualities we need. I'm sure everybody in the dressing room would be boosted, not just on the park but off the park, where he's a good character to have around the dressing room. He enjoyed his spell here. I know he's got great affection for the club and I'm sure if there's any club he would like to come back to, it's us." Dundee head into the second half of the season sitting at the bottom of the league hoping to halt the losing streak that saw them fail to pick up a point from their last four games before the winter break. Smith added: "Everybody just wants to get back playing and to give themselves every chance of staying in this division. It can work two ways in that the break may have given them time to think about it, but it's also given them the motivation and time to think positively about how we can get out of this situation. I'm sure those positive thoughts will get us out of it." The Dens Park side head to Easter Road tomorrow to take on a Hibs side who provided their last SPL win, last November. Smith said: "We've had two contrasting games against Hibs. In one of them, they did extremely well at Easter Road. But we will focus on the performance against them here where we did extremely well. The players did everything we asked of them and we got a good result. We will be asking them to do similar things. They can take confidence from the fact that they've beaten them at Dens and they must take all the good things that we did in that game into the game on Saturday."